Gateway's Promise not to sell Sub-$1,000 PCs?

Back in the late 90's when I ws in college I would build PCs for
students and charge a somewhat small fee. Just enough tfor books.
I read an ad written by Ted Waitt of (then) Gateway 2000 explaining why
he thought Sub $1,000 PCs were not in the customer's best interests.
Obviously since then things have changed.
Has anyone ever seen this ad?

On 22 Jul 2006 13:39:17 -0700, "Justin"
wrote:

Has anyone ever seen this ad?

I do remeber it and a lot of other things Ted Waitt said and/or
promissed. But you have to remember that that was back when Gateway
was actually a computer manufacturer supported by their own support
teams that spoke the same language as the person calling in. That was
back before they turned into nothing more than a Sales and Marketing
firm that pushes junk thrown togehter out of China and Thiwan with
their name stamped on the box and suppored by Rahul out of India.

I use to buy a new desktop every other year and it was always from GW.
The last GW desktop was in 2000 and was a nighmare both in quality and
support. I never went back to them for another desktop after that.
Thanks to GW, I learned about White Boxes built by reputable local
builders and the merrits of such. Problem is, we are still dependant
on these Sales and Marketing firms for our labtops because there ain't
no such thing as a local laptop white box.... Yet!

Prior to 2000, when Gateway knew what a computer actually was and
built their own and what support actually was and supported their own,
they were a great "Computer" company to do business with.

Regards,

Ed wrote:
On 22 Jul 2006 13:39:17 -0700, "Justin"
wrote:

Has anyone ever seen this ad?

I do remeber it and a lot of other things Ted Waitt said and/or
promissed. But you have to remember that that was back when Gateway
was actually a computer manufacturer supported by their own support
teams that spoke the same language as the person calling in. That was
back before they turned into nothing more than a Sales and Marketing
firm that pushes junk thrown togehter out of China and Thiwan with
their name stamped on the box and suppored by Rahul out of India.

I use to buy a new desktop every other year and it was always from GW.
The last GW desktop was in 2000 and was a nighmare both in quality and
support. I never went back to them for another desktop after that.
Thanks to GW, I learned about White Boxes built by reputable local
builders and the merrits of such. Problem is, we are still dependant
on these Sales and Marketing firms for our labtops because there ain't
no such thing as a local laptop white box.... Yet!

Prior to 2000, when Gateway knew what a computer actually was and
built their own and what support actually was and supported their own,
they were a great "Computer" company to do business with.

Regards,


I understand.
I was the same way. I ordered a laptop for my brother a few months ago
and I have to say I'm dissapointed in all the crap that put on the damn
thing. I would have been better off reformatting but I didn't have the
time.
I think Gateway is dead, they just don't know it.
The last time I ordered a PC from then, I think was in 1998, and it
came with just Windows and Office. Period.
The good 'ol days.
The c losest thing I can find to a local whitebot laptop are those
non-OS laptops. You have to look, but they are actually being sold out
there. I never ordered them.
I have to retail copies of WIndows XP, every other year when i
dismantle my desktops and sell off the parts and later build a new
maching I just use that.
Yeah... nostaliga.
I wish ONE motherboard manufacturer would make a modern board, withn no
NIC, no sound and no video. Just for those of us who know what we're
doing.

I can't argue loudly about on-board video, but on-board NIC and on-board audio,
provided they are of reasonable quality, cost pennies to build into a
motherboard and give excellent performance. Intel or Broadcom NIC chips are
first rate. So are ADI audio chips. So why would you need something different?
The best argument would be if one were a major audiophile with discriminating
ear to match. Then maybe a $200 audio card would make sense. If so, the
on-board audio can always be disabled.

On-board video is not really awful either for most run-of-the-mill computing
tasks. It simply does not cut it for gamers... Ben Myers

On 23 Jul 2006 12:18:23 -0700, "Justin" wrote:


Ed wrote:
On 22 Jul 2006 13:39:17 -0700, "Justin"
wrote:

Has anyone ever seen this ad?

I do remeber it and a lot of other things Ted Waitt said and/or
promissed. But you have to remember that that was back when Gateway
was actually a computer manufacturer supported by their own support
teams that spoke the same language as the person calling in. That was
back before they turned into nothing more than a Sales and Marketing
firm that pushes junk thrown togehter out of China and Thiwan with
their name stamped on the box and suppored by Rahul out of India.

I use to buy a new desktop every other year and it was always from GW.
The last GW desktop was in 2000 and was a nighmare both in quality and
support. I never went back to them for another desktop after that.
Thanks to GW, I learned about White Boxes built by reputable local
builders and the merrits of such. Problem is, we are still dependant
on these Sales and Marketing firms for our labtops because there ain't
no such thing as a local laptop white box.... Yet!

Prior to 2000, when Gateway knew what a computer actually was and
built their own and what support actually was and supported their own,
they were a great "Computer" company to do business with.

Regards,


I understand.
I was the same way. I ordered a laptop for my brother a few months ago
and I have to say I'm dissapointed in all the crap that put on the damn
thing. I would have been better off reformatting but I didn't have the
time.
I think Gateway is dead, they just don't know it.
The last time I ordered a PC from then, I think was in 1998, and it
came with just Windows and Office. Period.
The good 'ol days.
The c losest thing I can find to a local whitebot laptop are those
non-OS laptops. You have to look, but they are actually being sold out
there. I never ordered them.
I have to retail copies of WIndows XP, every other year when i
dismantle my desktops and sell off the parts and later build a new
maching I just use that.
Yeah... nostaliga.
I wish ONE motherboard manufacturer would make a modern board, withn no
NIC, no sound and no video. Just for those of us who know what we're
doing.

Ben Myers wrote:
I can't argue loudly about on-board video, but on-board NIC and on-board audio,
provided they are of reasonable quality, cost pennies to build into a
motherboard and give excellent performance. Intel or Broadcom NIC chips are
first rate. So are ADI audio chips. So why would you need something different?
The best argument would be if one were a major audiophile with discriminating
ear to match. Then maybe a $200 audio card would make sense. If so, the
on-board audio can always be disabled.

On-board video is not really awful either for most run-of-the-mill computing
tasks. It simply does not cut it for gamers... Ben Myers


I understand that, I simply like choosing every component.
than again I also liked paying a buck for a gallon of gas too.

Component or commodity? They are all commodities these days. In a few areas,
there are some brands of commodity components that are better than others.
There are good quaility motherboards (Intel, Asus and maybe a couple others) and
pure junk (PC Chips, ECS, Matsonic, MicroStar and any other brand name for a PC
Chips board). There are good hard drives (Fujitsu, Seagate) and junk (Maxtor
now assimilated by Seagate, Samsung). There are decent CD/DVD
readers/burners/combo drives (Sony, Hitachi, LG) and really and truly no-name
brands. Cases differ in price, quality and features. You still have major
choices available like AMD vs Intel or Celeron vs Pentium 4 vs Xeon.

So pick your commodity components from what is available and move on.

.... Ben Myers


On 23 Jul 2006 14:48:23 -0700, "Justin" wrote:


Ben Myers wrote:
I can't argue loudly about on-board video, but on-board NIC and on-board audio,
provided they are of reasonable quality, cost pennies to build into a
motherboard and give excellent performance. Intel or Broadcom NIC chips are
first rate. So are ADI audio chips. So why would you need something different?
The best argument would be if one were a major audiophile with discriminating
ear to match. Then maybe a $200 audio card would make sense. If so, the
on-board audio can always be disabled.

On-board video is not really awful either for most run-of-the-mill computing
tasks. It simply does not cut it for gamers... Ben Myers


I understand that, I simply like choosing every component.
than again I also liked paying a buck for a gallon of gas too.

Ben Myers wrote:
Component or commodity? They are all commodities these days. In a few areas,
there are some brands of commodity components that are better than others.
There are good quaility motherboards (Intel, Asus and maybe a couple others) and
pure junk (PC Chips, ECS, Matsonic, MicroStar and any other brand name for a PC
Chips board). There are good hard drives (Fujitsu, Seagate) and junk (Maxtor
now assimilated by Seagate, Samsung). There are decent CD/DVD
readers/burners/combo drives (Sony, Hitachi, LG) and really and truly no-name
brands. Cases differ in price, quality and features. You still have major
choices available like AMD vs Intel or Celeron vs Pentium 4 vs Xeon.

So pick your commodity components from what is available and move on.

... Ben Myers


I suppose you're right.
Of course, I can't afford to build a new PC anyway thanks to school.

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:50:13 -0400, Ben Myers ben_myers_spam_me_not @
charter.net wrote:

There are good hard drives (Fujitsu, Seagate) and junk (Maxtor
now assimilated by Seagate, Samsung).

Does Maxtor being "assimilated" by Seagate mean that the quality of
Maxtor might rise a bit or is it just a change of label ownership and
will not effect the manufacturing process associated with Maxtor?

Regards,
Ed

Seagate is the Borg in this matter and the general feeling in the industry is
that Seagate bought market share and not technology, and that Seagate will phase
out Maxtor hard drive designs as quickly as possible, to maintain its own decent
reputation. There is no sense in carrying forward two sets of hard drive
designs, two sets of engineers, etc. I would expect the Maxtor brand name to
carry on for a bit, then get dropped, as when Quantum was bought by Maxtor. I
tore down an older computer the other day and one hard drive had a Maxtor label
on an obviously Quantum design. The failed second drive in the system was
(Surprise!) a Maxtor of Maxtor design... Ben Myers

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:51:54 -0400, Ed wrote:

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:50:13 -0400, Ben Myers ben_myers_spam_me_not @
charter.net wrote:

There are good hard drives (Fujitsu, Seagate) and junk (Maxtor
now assimilated by Seagate, Samsung).

Does Maxtor being "assimilated" by Seagate mean that the quality of
Maxtor might rise a bit or is it just a change of label ownership and
will not effect the manufacturing process associated with Maxtor?

Regards,
Ed

Ben Myers wrote:
Seagate is the Borg in this matter and the general feeling in the industry is
that Seagate bought market share and not technology, and that Seagate will phase
out Maxtor hard drive designs as quickly as possible, to maintain its own decent
reputation. There is no sense in carrying forward two sets of hard drive
designs, two sets of engineers, etc. I would expect the Maxtor brand name to
carry on for a bit, then get dropped, as when Quantum was bought by Maxtor. I
tore down an older computer the other day and one hard drive had a Maxtor label
on an obviously Quantum design. The failed second drive in the system was
(Surprise!) a Maxtor of Maxtor design... Ben Myers



I never had problems with Maxtor... I know people who did.
I like Western Digital myself.

Come ot think of it... I haven't had a hard drive fail since 1995 and
it was a Fujitsu.

Does that mean I'm due?